Odin's sudden self-detonation and death shocked all eighty-two god-level experts. They waited in anxious suspense.
Suddenly—
Lin Lei turned his head to look at them, and one among the eighty-two god-level experts immediately spoke up: "Lord Lin Lei, we carried out your orders completely. Please, spare us!" "Everything in the past was on Lord Odin's orders. We had no choice!"
A chorus of pleas for mercy erupted.
"Father, you can't spare them!" Taylor shouted urgently from behind.
"Hm?" Lin Lei turned to look.
Rein, standing beside Taylor, added urgently too: "Old Three, you absolutely cannot let these eighty-two go. Back then, the ones who killed those Saint-level experts weren't Odin's doing—it was these lackeys. George was killed by this group. And Dikexi—they killed him too!"
"It was them." Dilia couldn't help but look over, her eyes filled with hatred.
How could Odin, of such high status, personally go and kill Saint-level experts? Nine out of ten evil deeds had been carried out by these lackeys.
The eighty-two began to panic. "Lord Lin Lei, this isn't our fault! It was Lord Odin's orders!"
Lin Lei's cold gaze swept over them. One god-level expert was so terrified he immediately turned and fled, sending a frantic soul transmission: "Run!" From the look in Lin Lei's eyes, he had sensed something was terribly wrong. The moment one fled, the other eighty-one made to escape as well.
Some took to the sky, others burrowed underground.
*Hummm—* An earthy-yellow radiance instantly spread outward, forming a massive spherical region thousands of meters in diameter. It penetrated even two kilometers underground. Within this sphere, all eighty-two god-level experts were bound, caught beneath a gravitational force that even a Seven-Star Demon would struggle to resist.
*Boom!* A handful among them, their physical bodies too fragile, collapsed on the spot.
Fortunately, for god-level experts, as long as the soul remained intact, they would not perish. Though all eighty-two were pulled helplessly toward Lin Lei by the overwhelming gravity, at least none had died.
"Lord Lin Lei." The one who had just tried to flee now pleaded for mercy, his earlier bravado gone.
"Father, kill them. Avenge Uncle!" Taylor urged.
"Old Three," Rein echoed.
Lin Lei swept a frigid gaze over all eighty-two. "Yes, you were Odin's subordinates, and you had to follow his orders. But for over a thousand years, you never once left the Yulan Plane. You were content to stay here… You followed Odin's commands of your own free will. You have no one to blame for your deaths!"
If any of them had truly wanted to break free from Odin, they could have gone straight to the Arctic Tundra and ascended to a Higher Plane. Odin couldn't have stopped them.
"Lin Lei, you—you—"
In an instant the eighty-two broke into terrified pleas, furious curses, or muttered ramblings. Yet they continued hurtling toward Lin Lei's side under the pull of gravity. A powerful surge of Earth Godforce erupted from Lin Lei's body, piercing through all eighty-two like sharp arrows.
A muffled boom, and all eighty-two were reduced to dust.
"Wotton, you handle these." The divine sparks, spatial rings, and divine artifacts on the ground were swept up by a wave of Godforce and floated before Wotton. These lower and middle divine sparks were still quite valuable in a material plane.
Wotton quickly collected everything.
"Let's go back." Not a trace of a smile on his face, Lin Lei shot straight into the sky.
The rest of Dragon Blood Castle's people followed him upward, leaving only two Saint-level experts behind. The two Saints walked straight toward the Baruch Empire's envoy who had been held under guard. The soldiers escorting the envoy, seeing what had just happened, hastily untied him.
"Ha ha! Your Odin Empire is finished!" the envoy declared.
The ministers of the Odin Empire exchanged glances. They all understood—before the overwhelming might of the Baruch Empire, the Odin Empire was truly done for.
"The empire is finished."
The battle at the Odin Empire's capital, Lin Lei's sudden appearance, his killing of Odin and the eighty-two god-level experts—these events threw the entire Yulan Continent into turmoil once more. The experts who had previously submitted to Odin out of respect for his overwhelming power now had no reason to remain loyal to the Odin Empire. They immediately turned against it.
The entire Odin Empire crumbled overnight.
Though Odin had other god-level subordinates besides these eighty-two, a handful scattered elsewhere across the Yulan Continent, upon learning of Odin's death and the annihilation of the eighty-two, fled in terror to the Arctic Tundra. One by one, they departed the Yulan Plane entirely.
The Odin Empire disintegrated at a staggering pace.
Meanwhile, the Baruch Empire expanded just as rapidly. And the whole of the Yulan Continent learned of Lin Lei's return.
"That Grandmaster Lin Lei—vanished for nearly two thousand years, and now he's resurfaced?"
"Emperor Odin was actually killed?"
News of the battle spread across the entire Yulan Continent once more.
Dragon Blood Castle.
Half a month had passed since Odin's death. During these fifteen days, Lin Lei and Bei Bei remained at Dragon Blood Castle. Lin Lei knew that Odin's strongest clone—the Death God clone—had escaped to the Underworld, but the Underworld was far too vast. How was he supposed to find him? It was like searching for a needle in a haystack.
"Old Three, ease up on the drinking," Rein said.
At the moment, Lin Lei and Rein were sitting opposite each other in the courtyard, drinking and talking. But whenever the conversation turned to Odin and Yeru, Lin Lei kept drinking more and more, bottle after bottle flowing into his stomach.
"Old Three." Rein grabbed Lin Lei's arm and made him stop.
Lin Lei set the bottle down heavily, looking at Rein with a bitter expression. He sighed softly: "Old Four, it hurts inside!"
Lin Lei tilted his head back, tears glistening in his eyes. "Every time I think about what happened to Brother Yeru, it hurts. Can I even call this avenging him? At best, I only killed Odin's Wind God clone. That Wind God clone was far less important to Odin than his Death God clone. And that Odin—he's still frolicking in the Underworld right now."
"But Brother Yeru? Broken to the point of sending you to kill him." The more Lin Lei thought about what Yeru had endured, the more indignant he became, his chest aching with rage. "I want nothing more than to go to the Underworld, find Odin, and kill him. It's just… finding Odin is too difficult. The Underworld is simply too, too vast!"